Aimee T. Brissman
University of Michigan-Dearborn
Exhibits
Lesson
One - Communicating with
Friends Across Town
This lesson emerged when the children received an e-mail from Kindergarten students at the Northwest Early Childhood Center in Detroit, Michigan. After using the projector to display the e-mail on the large screen at group time and reading it together, we worked together to compose a reply letter in Microsoft Word. The content of the letter was composed by giving each child an opportunity to share an idea and by posing the question, "Do you know what makes things fly through the air?" to our new friends.
| Lesson
Plan |
| Letter to My
Students |
| Letter From My Students |
Here, the children help me read the letter
from their new friends at Northwest Early Childhood Center.
Lesson Two - Sharing our Creations
This lesson came forth after Mrs. Filipiak and I observed the children using our project center, which contains many different open-ended recyclable materials, to create objects that move through the air. The children were producing creations so quickly and taking them home that we were having a hard time documenting their ideas. To give the children an opportunity to share their ideas, build their self-image and confidence and learn from each other, I developed a slide show in Microsoft Power Point that displayed digital photographs of the children with their creations and provided space for a teacher to record their ideas while they shared at group time.
| Lesson
Plan |
| Power Point Presentation |
* Microsoft Power
Point is needed to view the above presentation
The laptop computer and the projector gave all the children
the opportunity to see the creations of their peers at the same time.
Using this technology also allowed the children to clearly visualize
each individual part that was being described.
Lesson
Three - Making a KWL Chart with KidspirationAfter teaching many lessons that dealt with the concept of flight, I felt it was necessary to stop and summarize what we had already learned or knew and what we still wanted to find out. To help the children organize their ideas and create a plan for the future of our project, we used the KWL chart on the Kidspiration 2 software. At the end of our project, we revisited this chart and added what we learned.
| Lesson
Plan |
| KWL Chart |
The projector visualized the children's ideas and promoted a
positive self-image by allowing the children to see that their ideas
were important enough to be recorded. The KWL chart helped us to
visualize our learning about flight over the course of the semester.
Lesson Four - Using Kid Pix to Represent our Ideas
Since the children shared so many interesting ideas in the making of our KWL chart in lesson three, I decided that they were ready for me to provide them with a means to begin representing their ideas. Since the children had many opportunities to explore the Kid Pix Deluxe software over the semester and enjoy using it, I decided to use this familiar piece of software as both a motivater and tool and invited each of them to use it to demonstrate their understanding of how things move through the air.
| Lesson
Plan |
| Student Examples |
Mustafa
and Nathan are using different tools on
Kid Pix to create their representations of how they think
something flies. Mustafa (left) decides to include wind, wings, and a
point on a plane, while Nathan (right) creates a bird with wings.
Lesson Five - Revisiting our Representations
After reviewing their Kid Pix representations, I noticed that the children had many different ideas about how things moved through the air. They seemed to recognize that there are different components to something being able to move through the air, but still had not made many connections between them. To help them make some of these connections, we did several different lessons involving a fan moving objects and a blow dryer moving a Ping Pong ball. After reviewing documentation from these lessons, the children's connections had improved, but were still not as strong as I had hoped. To strengthen their understanding, I created another slide show using Microsoft Power Point that included digital photographs from prior lessons, as well as scanned images of paper and pencil representations by several children that we reviewed by projecting the show on the large screen at group time.
| Lesson
Plan |
| Power
Point Presentation |
* Microsoft Power
Point is needed to view the above presentation
Click here to download a free Power Point viewer
Click here to download a free Power Point viewer
Having the picture of
the blow dryer up
on the screen gave children the opportunity to think back to
the previous lesson with the blow dryer and the Ping Pong ball and
discuss their theories about what happened before any comparisons with
the fan were made.
The projector allowed children to revisit their previous representations of the fan and the feather and visibly share their ideas with her friends.
The projector allowed children to revisit their previous representations of the fan and the feather and visibly share their ideas with her friends.
Lesson Six - Researching Flight on the Internet
To solidify the children's understandings and clear up any misconceptions they had at the end of the semester, we used the Internet and the projector to check out several Websites that provided information about how things fly or move through the air in a child-friendly manner. We read through information, participated in simulations and manipulated illustrations to help the children make connections and gain more valid understandings.
| Lesson
Plan |
| NASA "How Things
Fly" Website |
| Boeing
"How Do Things Fly?" Website |
| College
Park Aviation Museum |
| NASA UEET
Kid's Page |
I had planned on
using the projector to
display the Internet sites shown on the computer monitor, but on the
day of the lesson, the Internet was not working, so I was flexible and
took the children
down to the CDC office to research there.
Here,
we are
observing an airfoil on the computer screen and using the piece of
paper to create our own simulation and test our understanding.
Lesson Seven - Writing Back to our Friends Across Town
After I was confident that the children had a good grasp on the concept of flight, I used the projector and Microsoft Word to share the e-mail reply that their friends from Northwest Early Childhood Center had sent to them. Since this reply included their responses to the question we posed about how things move through the air, we read the letter together and discussed the validity of their responses. After our discussion, I gave each child an opportunity to share their understandings about how things move through the air, which provided the content of our reply back to our friends. Thus, this last lesson gave my children an opportunity to summarize their understandings and use their knowledge to teach others.
| Lesson
Plan |
| Letter to
My Students |
| Letter From My Students |
The computer and the
projector made a
more meaningful literacy experience possible. With the projector, the
children were able to read the letter from their friends along
with me and when it was time to respond and write a letter back, they
were able to view their words and those of their friends.
After we finished writing the reply letter as a group, the "the pen" was shared with the children and they were now given the opportunity to type on the computer and sign their name to the letter.
After we finished writing the reply letter as a group, the "the pen" was shared with the children and they were now given the opportunity to type on the computer and sign their name to the letter.